Ana Seymour (17 page)

Kate had started taking over Jennie’s cooking duties at the mine three days a week. Jennie had mostly stopped being sick in the morning, but she still tired easily, and neither Carter nor Kate liked the way her face had grown paler with dark circles under her eyes.

“I should probably insist on taking over every day,” she told Sean one night as they lay nestled in his bed. Kate’s bedroom was used solely by Caroline these days, prompting Kate to tease Sean that he was determined that his daughter would have a nursery one way or another.

“Yup,” he’d teased back. “I was forced to entice her mother into my bed so that my poor child could have a room.”

After two weeks, the arrangement seemed to be taken for granted by everyone, though Kate still felt a niggling worry that all this happiness could be snatched away from her at any moment. It had happened before. There was a quick moment of relief each night when Sean came home to her, whistling and obviously content.

“But you told me that Jennie wanted to keep working,” he answered.

“She does, but maybe it’s not good for her. Though the way Caroline’s running around, I don’t know which is more work—cooking for forty miners or keeping track of one little girl.”

Sean chuckled and juggled her in his arms. “She
can tucker me out quicker than ten loads of ore,” he agreed.

“I thought you were going to talk to the foreman about a different job than hauling.”

“Hauling’s not so bad. At least I get out into the open now and then to ogle the pretty cook.” He gave her bottom an affectionate swat.

She kissed his chin in return, but returned to her subject. “I just worry that you’re going to get tired of that job. It looks so exhausting.”

“Sweetheart, one of these days you’re going to stop being so worried that something’s going to make me change my mind about being here with you. I’ve told you that this is where I’m going to stay-with you and Caroline.”

“Even if you have to push ore cars the rest of your life?”

At one point Sean would have gotten touchy at the question, but he only laughed easily and said, “I’ll be finding something else to do one of these days. For now I’m happy concentrating on spending the evemngs with my daughter.” His voice grew low and sensual as he added, “And the nights with my wife.”

She wanted to believe him. She wanted it more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life. But once bitten, twice shy, as her mother used to say. She sat up and reached for the covers, though she didn’t feel the least bit cold. “Your wife appreciates the nights, too,” she told him.

She settled down in his arms, but thoughts kept whirring through her head as she tried to sleep. Jennie…
her baby coming…Sean’s lean aristocratic hands now welted with blisters…Barnaby and his friends…

She sat up. Sean blinked up at her, half-asleep. “Barnaby could take care of Caroline, while I cook at the mine. That would keep him home during the day.”

“Sweetheart, why don’t you let Jennie work another month if she wants to? By then she’ll be showing, and she’ll have to stop anyway.”

“I don’t like Barnaby roaming about with the other children when the sickness is back,” she explained.

“I don’t either, Katie. But it’s hard to keep a boy of his age at home.”

“Hmm. If Jennie—”

Sean reached up and pulled her back down beside him. “It’ll keep until morning, my love. Tomorrow we’ll take a look at all your plans and see how we’re going to make life right for everyone.”

Within minutes she could hear his breathing turn deep and even. Poor Sean, she. thought. He
did
work hard every day. He did appear to be trying. She wasn’t totally convinced that he would keep up such a difficult life, but at the moment, she had to admit that, as she and Jennie had observed, for once life at Sheridan House seemed pretty close to perfect.

“So I decided that I’m taking over the mine job for good, at least until after the baby’s born. Barnaby can help you take care of things down here,” Kate said. “It’ll work until they start up school again, anyway.”

She and Jennie were packing up the food Kate would take up to the mine that day. She’d lain awake for a long time the previous night thinking about it,
and she’d decided that her decision to take over for Jennie was a good idea.

“I’m perfectly capable of walking up to the mine,” Jennie argued.

“It’s not just the walk up. It’s walking up, then standing on your feet for four hours cooking and serving and washing up. You’ve got to begin to consider your limitations, Jennie.”

“You and Carter are in a conspiracy,” Jennie said, and smiled.

“Well, good. If you won’t listen to me, maybe you’ll listen to him.”

“I don’t intend to listen to either of you until I’m good and ready.”

Kate jammed a loaf of bread into the bag. “Well, maybe you’ll think about Barnaby, then. He’s out running wild every day with his friends. It would do him good to have to shoulder a little more responsibility around here.”

“He’s still a boy, Kate,” Jennie admonished.

“Yes, and there’s flu abroad.”

This statement sobered them both. Even the word itself was enough to evoke memories of those horrible two weeks when they had had to stand by and watch their parents die, one after the other.

“I’ll tell him to stay home,” Jennie agreed, her eyes worried.

“We should all stay in as much as possible. We don’t want to bring anything back to the house that might put you at risk…and the baby.”

“Or Caroline,” Jennie added.

Kate felt a wave of panic in her stomach. Her parents
had been healthy and strong, yet the scourge had taken them both. Caroline was still so tiny. “Lordy,” she said.

Jennie gave her shoulders a shake. “Well, now we’re asking for trouble to jump into our basket, as mother used to say. This time around’s not anywhere near like it was two years ago, according to Dr. Millard.”

“The school closing was just a precaution,” Kate agreed as they gave each other reassuring smiles.

The back door banged and Barnaby came in, carrying a dead rabbit. “See what I shot?” he asked. His face looked flushed with triumph.

“Good job, Barnaby,” Jennie said. “We’ll have it for dinner. You can help me skin it when I get back from the mine.”

He let the rabbit fall right in the middle of the kitchen floor. “I don’t know, Jennie. You might have to skin it yourself.” His voice sounded odd. The flush in his face suddenly looked more ominous than a boy’s hunting triumph.

“What’s the matter?” Kate asked in alarm.

Barnaby’s eyes rolled around. “I don’t feel so good,” he said, then he slowly slid to the floor.

T
hey’d put Barnaby immediately to bed. Then Kate had taken the food up to the mine, prepared a hasty lunch and had hurried back home, after telling the foreman not to expect her services for a while.

Sean and Carter each arrived home early from work and joined their wives for a somber dinner, all utterly conscious of Barnaby’s empty chair. Kate and Jennie took turns sitting with him all evening. Dr. Millard came by about nine o’clock. He’d been seeing flu patients since sunup.

“Try a cool cloth on his head for the fever,” he’d said. “But don’t let him take a chill. Keep him well covered up. And get some soup down him.”

The instructions were dismal echoes of what they’d been told when their parents had been taken sick. Jennie and Kate had exchanged scared glances across Barnaby’s bed.

To everyone’s relief, by morning, it appeared that Barnaby’s fever had broken. He asked for some water and even managed a smile when Sean came to see him
and teased him about trying to get out of rabbitskinning duty by feigning sickness.

They’d been lucky, Kate told Sean, who was taking the day off from the mine. But by afternoon, her words proved to be ominously premature.

“Kate, this doesn’t feel like the morning sickness,” Jennie had told her sister after running out the back door of the kitchen to lose her lunch on the cold ground.

Kate looked at her sister with a sinking heart. “Dr. Millard says the strain’s not as bad as two years ago,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. The strain may not be as bad, but Jennie was already fatigued from her pregnancy. She looked ghastly, her face flushed red except for a deadly whiteness around her mouth.

Sean went to the law office for Carter, who came home immediately to put his wife to bed and insisted on sitting right beside her the rest of the day. Kate went back and forth from Jennie to a recovering Barnaby. Sean fixed dishes of nun’s toast for the patients. Barnaby ate the cut-up bread and hot milk readily. Jennie could not even look at the dish without becoming once again sick to her stomach.

Dr. Millard arrived and took her pulse. “Try chicken broth,” he told Kate, his voice grave. “If she gets too weak, she won’t be able to fight it.”

“Will you come to bed, sweetheart?” Sean asked, meeting Kate on the stairs as she continued her trips back and forth between Barnaby’s little bed behind the kitchen and Jennie’s bedroom. “It’s nearly midnight, and you’re exhausted yourself.”

Kate shook her head. “No. I’ll stay up.”

“You were up all night last night with Barnaby.”

Kate’s eyes filled with tears. “I was up every night for two weeks nursing my parents.” She leaned forward and let her head rest against his chest for a moment. Then she straightened up, rubbed a hand at her back and said, “I’ll be all right. You go on to bed.”

Sean shook his head. “If you’re not going to sleep, I won’t either.”

“But you have to work tomorrow.”

“No. I’m not going back until everyone’s healthy again. I’ve sent word.”

She smiled at him gratefully. “Well, you could check on Caroline, then. Just be sure she’s sleeping peacefully.”

But, to Sean’s horror, Caroline wasn’t sleeping peacefully at all. Her eyes were open and glazed. Her tiny body was drenched in sweat. “Good Lord,” Sean whispered. He picked her up and cradled her in his arms for a long moment, then placed her back in her crib and went running to fetch Kate.

He found her in Carter’s arms. His brother- in-law looked up as Sean entered the room. “She walked over to the bed and collapsed,” he said.

“Is she.?” Sean began.

“Burning up,” Carter confirmed. “God Almighty, Sean, they’ve both got it.” His normally calm gray eyes were frightened.

Sean sagged against the door frame. “Caroline, too.”

Carter swore under his breath. “What are we going to do?”

Sean pushed himself upright and took a deep breath. “We’re going to get them well,” he said.

Sean had never worked so hard in his life. With two men who had never had the running of a household to themselves trying to take care of four patients, there was not even a minute for rest. Sean did not leave the house. Carter brought in food, since he had to make periodic trips to his office to deal with urgent legal matters.

Barnaby was recovering, but stayed weak. When he was told that Caroline was sick, he insisted on going to her room to see her, but just the effort of walking down the hall and back had him wringing wet, and Sean told him he’d have to stay in bed another day.

Sean put Kate to bed in her own bedroom so that he could care for both her and Caroline together. The first night and day of the illness, Kate wasn’t coherent enough to understand that Caroline was sick. When the baby would occasionally begin a feeble cry, Sean would drop everything else and hold her until she was comforted again. Every spare minute that he wasn’t preparing food, hauling water, washing out drenched linens, emptying waste basins, putting cold cloths on the patients’ foreheads or spooning soup into their mouths, he’d take Caroline in his arms and rock her. Feeling delirious himself from lack of sleep, he’d croon to her, talk to her, kiss her soft cheek, and then he’d put her back into her crib, look down at her fragile listless form and do what he hadn’t done since he was a child—pray.

By the third day things seemed to be reaching a
climax. Sean’s eyes stung from weariness and his head was muddled, but he was encouraged that Kate was sleeping peacefully and seemed to be breathing easily. Her color was returning to normal.

Barnaby was definitely on the mend. The boy had gone down to the kitchen earlier and helped Sean prepare a chicken for soup.

But Caroline still lay weak and quiet, far too quiet, in her bed. And Jennie was once again thrashing with fever as the sun began to set. Sean closed his eyes in relief when the front door slammed and he heard Carter’s voice calling to him that he was back. The two men had become as close as real brothers during their ordeal.

“I’m in Kate’s room,” Sean called down to him.

In a minute, Carter appeared in the doorway with Dr. Millard.

The old town doctor had been concerned at first about leaving the two men as nurses. “I could ask around in town for someone to come give you men a hand,” he’d said, “though there’s hardly a family left that’s not dealing with the sickness themselves.”

But Carter and Sean had assured the doctor that they would take care of their own families, and after watching the two men these past three days, Dr. Millard had admitted, with admiration, that he couldn’t have found more attentive nurses in a big city hospital.

“How are the patients tonight?” the doctor asked, entering the bedroom.

Kate opened her eyes. “Caroline?” she asked weakly.

Sean was at her side immediately. “The doctor’s
here to see the two of you, sweetheart. You’re doing much better. You slept nicely most of the afternoon Caroline’s sleeping, too,” he answered evasively.

“What about Jennie?” she asked.

“Dr. Millard will see Jennie next. You just worry about getting well yourself.”

“I want to hold her,” she said, nodding toward the crib. Her voice was hoarse.

Sean looked at Dr. Millard, who nodded, then he picked Caroline up from her crib and laid her in Kate’s arms.

“She’s lost weight,” Kate said.

It was true. In three short days, she’d changed. The baby chubbiness was gone from her cheeks. “She’ll gain it back when she starts feeling better,” Sean said, straining to keep his voice from reflecting his worry.

Kate’s eyes drifted closed again, and Sean picked up Caroline, hugged her to his chest, then placed her back in her crib. “There must be something else we can do, Doctor,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Caroline’s not getting better, and she’s wasting away.”

Dr. Millard shook his head. “These things hit harder with babies and old folks. We don’t know why.”

Sean shook his head to clear his suddenly blurred vision. “We’re not going to lose her. Or Jennie, either.”

Carter had already disappeared into his and Jennie’s bedroom. The doctor looked at Sean, from his uncombed hair to his rumpled clothes. “You’re doing all you can, Sean. And if you don’t get a little sleep yourself, you’ll be the next patient.”

“I’m fine.”

Dr. Millard shook his head, picked up his black bag from the bed and started out of the room. “Kate’s doing much better. By tomorrow you’ll see her starting to get back to herself. Why don’t you lie down there next to her and rest?”

“I think I’ll just rock Caroline for a few minutes, then I’ll see if that soup’s ready.”

Dr. Millard fixed him with a hard look. “I don’t mind telling you, son, that I was mighty angry with you when Kate first came to me a couple years back about the baby. With her own pa dead, I considered oiling up my old shotgun myself and going out in search of you. But I’m starting to think that I might have been wrong about you. When you see a man battle for his family the way you’ve been doing the past few days, it says something about his character.”

Sean was too tired for the doctor’s words to have much impact. At the moment, he didn’t give a damn what anyone thought of his character. He just wanted his family to be well again.

The main wave of infection seemed to have passed, the toll far lighter than the previous epidemic. They’d been lucky, most of the townfolk agreed. Three dead, all older folk who wouldn’t have had too many years left on this side of the vale by any account. The only still questionable case was the Sheridan baby, as she was still called, though she was a Flaherty now. She was hanging on by a thread, according to Henrietta Billingsley, who made it her business to know.

The Sheridan sisters had recovered, as had their adopted orphan boy. The two husbands had not been
infected. Carter Jones was keeping regular office hours again, but Kate Sheridan’s husband had not returned to his mine job. He was sharing his wife’s vigil at their child’s bedside.

Dr. Millard had been effusive in his description of Sean Flaherty’s heroics during his family’s illness. The man hadn’t slept for a week, according to the doctor. He’d bathed and clothed and ministered to not only his wife and daughter but his sister-in-law and Barnaby, as well. He’d carried bedpans and administered tonics, and one account had him sitting out on the back stoop all by himself plucking a chicken.

There was reluctant admiration among some of the families, even some of those who had been eager to condemn the San Francisco blue blood for leaving poor Kate Sheridan to face the consequences of his seduction. Some even expressed a willingness to finally welcome him as a bona fide citizen of the town.

But others said that the issue was probably moot in any case. Now that the patrician young man’s father and grandmother had come all the way from San Francisco to fetch him, there were few who believed that he would be content to stay in a backwater place like Vermillion. Whether little Caroline lived or not, the betting in town was that Sean Flaherty would soon once again be on his way out of town.

They had just finished a delicious supper that, amazingly, Sean and Barnaby had prepared entirely themselves.

“I offered to help,” Nonny said, “but I was run out of the kitchen.”

“Barnaby and I make a good team, don’t we, sprout?” Sean asked.

Barnaby grinned. “We sure do. But Sean has to do the gooey part.”

“Taking out the innards of the chicken,” Sean explained.

Patrick Flaherty shook his head in wonder. “I’ve heard it said that mountain air changes people, but I never would have credited this if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

Sean smiled tiredly. “I hope you didn’t have a problem with my cooking, Father,” he said dryly.

Patrick harrumphed and said, “On the contrary. I just find it quite.extraordinary.”

Nonny looked at her grandson fondly. “I’m proud of you, Sean. And you, lad,” she added, including Barnaby in her praise.

“And you can give my husband part of the credit,” Jennie put in. “I never thought I’d see the day that Carter Jones would be emptying out slop jars.”

“A good lawyer’s ready for any contingency,” Carter said, reaching across the table for his wife’s hand.

At the gesture Sean looked across the hall toward the stairs. “I think I’ll let the washing up be contingent on the lawyer this evening,” he said. “I’m going back to Caroline.”

The faces around the table became serious. “Do you want me to come, Sean?” Nonny asked.

“Later, if you like. We’ll be there all evening.”

“I’ll help Carter, and then I’ll be up,” Jennie said.

“Oh no, you won’t help Carter,” Carter disagreed. “You’re not strong enough. You’ll rest right here at
the table while Barnaby and I do the dishes.” He motioned to Barnaby, who jumped up and headed toward the kitchen. “Keep her occupied, will you, Mrs. Flaherty?” he said to Nonny. “Tell her what one’s supposed to do with babies.”

Both Nonny and Jennie laughed at his rather vague suggestion, but Jennie stayed seated and let Barnaby and Carter clear the table by themselves.

“The answer to your husband’s question about babies, my dear,” Nonny said after a moment, “is that you love them. And it appears you have a perfect example to follow watching your sister and my grandson.”

“They haven’t left Caroline alone for an instant,” Jennie said. “Sean will hardly let her out of his arms.”

Patrick was shaking his head again. “It’s hard to believe.”

Nonny shook her head. “I’m sorry, Patrick, but it’s not hard to believe at all. You’ve always underestimated Sean—all his life. He’s a warm, intelligent person, and I’ve always known that he was capable of giving so much. He was just waiting for the right opportunity…and for someone to give
to.”

“He’s certainly found that in Kate,” Jennie observed. “And as much or even more so in his daughter. Now if only…” She paused and her lip trembled.

“If only he doesn’t lose her, just when he’s discovered exactly how precious she is,” Nonny finished gently.

Patrick pulled off his spectacles and cleaned them with his napkin. “Don’t talk nonsense. No one’s going
to lose anyone. That little colleen is Flaherty stock. We breed ‘em strong.”